🔒Immigrant entrepreneurs: From Main St. to management

“Give them a green card with their diploma.” That was the mantra many venture capitalists in Cambridge, Mass., my former home, told me when I interviewed them about the decline in U.S. science and technology prowess.

The United States now ranks sixth in Bloomberg's 2015 ranking of the world's 50 most innovative countries, behind South Korea, Japan, Germany, Finland and Israel, in that order. Bloomberg based its rankings on six factors: R&D, manufacturing, high-tech companies, education, research personnel and patents.

There's no shortage of examples of immigrant entrepreneurs who have changed the U.S. innovation landscape. Inc. magazine named several in a story on “Icons of Entrepreneurship” in August who are “living the American dream.” Among them, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who spent most of his childhood in South Africa, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, born in Moscow and who fled anti-Semitism with his family.

Maine can tout its own stars. Graham Shimmield, executive director of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, was born in Trinidad and spent much of his prior academic career in Scotland. He won the Mainebiz Next award for trailblazers in 2011. His colleague, senior research scientist Ramunas Stepanauskas, hails from Lithuania, spent his prior academic career in Sweden, and won the Next award in 2014. Dr. Edison Liu, president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, was born in Hong Kong.

And Voot Yin, whose family fled Cambodia's Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s, is now assistant professor of regenerative biology at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory. He achieved the American dream, co-founding a startup company with lab Director Kevin Strange called Novo Biosciences Inc. Yin and Strange each won a Next award in 2013.

When I profiled Yin for his Next award, he told of a childhood marred by taunts from other children.

“I was not big enough, I was not smart enough, I didn't speak English,” he said. “An early lesson I learned is that with a lot of work, there's nothing you can't achieve.”

Immigrant entrepreneurs also have permeated Maine's companies. Take Kerem Durdag, CEO of Boothbay-based Biovation, which makes biopolymers. He was born and raised in Pakistan by his Turkish parents. He earned degrees at British and American schools, is a member of Maine Angels and serves on multiple for-profit and nonprofit boards, according to the World Affairs Council of Maine.

Maine faces a continuous shortage of workers on all levels.

The state took a step in early August to help remedy the situation. The Maine Department of Economic and Community Development Maine said it may start a visa program aimed at attracting more direct foreign investment through the EB-5 visa program. It was authorized by Congress in 1990 to give visas to foreigners investing $1 million ($500,000 in rural areas or those with high unemployment) and creating at least 10 new jobs.

According to the American Immigration Council, the EB-5 program contributed $2.6 billion to U.S. gross domestic product, supported 33,000 jobs and generated $346 million in federal tax revenue between 2010 and 2011.

Nationally, total applications for immigrant investor visas are skyrocketing to 10,923 in 2014 from 1,258 in 2008 at the start of the recession. That's a 768% rise over the six years.

Immigrant entrepreneurs need not be only scientists or technologists. Their impact filters through society. Take Masa Miyake of Japan, who runs two successful restaurants in Portland. Or Naima Abdirhmon, founder and owner of Arwo Childcare in Portland. She was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, but grew up in Portland.

Immigrant entrepreneurs have contributed at all levels of business and society, from Main Street to management. And Maine is taking notice.

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